This is more of a food quality issue than a food quantity issue. The strict hypercaloremic hypothesis is one that really is ready for retirement (and more or less has been retired in research circles).
It is not physicially possible to gain weight when you have a caloric deficit. Where would it even come from?
A flippant counter-example: eat only carbohydrates with a 1000 calorie deficit, drink 5 liters of water daily- 0 additional calories. How would you not gain water weight? Doesn't that count also?
The body is not a closed system.
The laws of thermodynamics tell you your caloric equations have to be balanced, but the internal state of the body can alter behaviors such as feeding and moving, so appealing to the laws of thermodynamics is pretty much off-topic. It's a common fallacy, and you're not alone in committing it. Obesity is increasingly seen as a metabolic disease with behavioral consequences rather than the other way around.
Here are two arbitrary papers I've blindly pulled out of the google-scholar hat, both of which discuss aspects of the issue at hand. Much has been written on the subject, and I respectfully urge you to investigate further.
1. http://www.nature.com/nrendo/journal/v2/n8/abs/ncpendmet0220...
2. https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2...
Also, if you're going to be sardonic, you really should make sure you're not missing anything...
In contrast to popular opinion, cars are one of the greatest equalizers on the planet.
Before cars, who gets to enjoy a nice Sunday morning at the beach?
The rich with beachside estates. There aren't too many busses going there at random hours of the day.
Without cars, how would the poor get to a national park?
Practically, public transportation only works when you want to go where the crowds are.
If you want to stand out, you've got to take a car.
And failing at it, oil use is still going up
> Less food? Working on it (see: /r/progresspics, and all the science and journalism on this, soda bans, etc).
And failing at it, see worldwide obesity statistics
> Less cars? Working on it (see: Waze, Uber, Lyft, public transit, et al).
And failing at it, see the meteoric rise of motorization in developing countries
> Do you suggest that China didn't try population control at scale for generations?
Are you suggesting it was a success, and didn't cause a huge gender imbalance which is threatening to cause social strife?